The Impact of the Malfunction of a Sector in Supply Chain on the Ordering Policy of Each Sector

Abstract

Maintaining an effective management of supply chain even in the disasters is becoming crucial issue for manufacturing industry, because the contemporary supply chain networks become global and complex and the behaviors of the network are hardly predictable. The Beer Game is a simple but very useful example of supply chain management. The game consists of four sectors: factory, distributor, wholesaler, and retailer and deliver the beer to the customers. Many business schools adopt it to learn the key point of supply chain. In this study, computer agents play the game instead of humans. Agents are evolved with a genetic algorithm. We examine how the agents handle the game especially when some part of supply chain exhibit malfunction. Through simulations, we confirmed that effective ordering strategies are different between sectors.